


A light at the end of the world

by LiseBMG



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Flint-centric, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 19:52:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8340514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiseBMG/pseuds/LiseBMG
Summary: Somewhere between the end of season 3 and Treasure Island. Captain Flint's last moments back to Nassau.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The whole thing was inspired by Nightwish song The Islander. Sorry if there are any mistakes left, english is not my mother tongue !

The man stood there, silent and still, overlooking the ocean. His shoes rested near him, old, used and relieved that their duty was finally accomplished and over. He felt the sand under his feet, cold and wet, sticking to his skin. It had not rained for so long in this part of world, he was starting to wonder if it would ever rain again when the first drop fell on his face. For a while, he even thought he was crying, but he was wrong. He had not cried for ages, he wasn’t going to cry today. His last real tears were for Miranda, when she died. When everything died with her, including himself.  


The man lifted his sea green eyes to the skies and there it was, the trail of smoke rising from Nassau. Even from afar, he could smell the ashes of his dreams burning down. _Their dreams_. How long had it been since Thomas was gone? He could not even remember. How ashamed he was of whom – of _what_ he had become since then. One could only see an old man whose ginger beard was beginning to turn white, whose eyes shone with the reflection of the light but bore no soul, no life, no love, no mercy no more. But it was not who he was.  


He once was Lieutenant McGraw. He once was brave and fiery, with everything to learn from love. Then he was crushed, and he once was Captain Flint. He once was a feared and fearless king, a fierce shell for the dreams of the deceived idealist. Then he was crushed again and he was nothing. An empty body, barely an armature, nothing but the ruins of a life he would have preferred not to have lived at all in the end. A few months of love – or was it only days? – could never make up for years of loss. Years of fighting, flesh and bones and blood and guts, for a dream he had not seen was long lost. Had he even succeeded, had he even made Nassau his own land of peace and bliss, what then? Thomas could never have it. He could never have it. And so he decided that no one could. No one deserved to take a place that rightfully belonged to a dead man.  


He had waited patiently, wandering in Nassau until everyone just assumed he was a harmless drunkard, just a shadow among shadows. And indeed a shadow he was, when he set the city on fire. It was just before dawn, the quiet hour when the whores had just gone to rest and the merchants were soon to wake for a new day. It was all so still and it brought to his heart an unbelievable joy, a kind he had not felt in years, to be the hand that doomed Nassau instead of saving it. He didn’t think a while of all the souls who would perish from his deed. He didn’t think of Eleanor, whom the great fire would find asleep in the arms of her new lover. He didn’t think of Anne Bonny or the corpse of her forever love hanging on a rope, in a street. He didn’t think of those whose Captain he once was, those whom he led to fight, to victory, and whom betrayed him without regret. He only cared about John Silver, and this one man he knew was safe away from Nassau. Perhaps, just perhaps, John Silver would be the man he had hoped to become. It was time to let Silver take his place in this world, succeed him on that deadly throne, and this world he was offering him, burned, destroyed, but not finished. He knew Silver could make it rise again. He knew Silver was the man, where he was nothing.  


It wasn’t a man anymore that boarded on the nameless ship that brought him there. He was already dead. The horizon was dark, crying, haunted by furious waves the same colour as his eyes. The sea would be his end, as it once was his beginning. He lifted the anchor and set the sail, one last time, right into the tempest yearning for him. Or perhaps it was him yearning for the tempest, for an end to all of this, his last mystery lost in a swirling ocean that had taken everything from him. What better end could he hope for? He would rather disappear in foamy waters, alone, nameless and unknown, than swing and sway like a pendulum as a general reminder of England's triumphant victory, his very own defeat.  


The rain became heavier, less soothing as he approached the roaring mouth of the storm that only waited to devour him. The wind untied his hair and he felt alive. He had started to grow them back once he had decided he was going to die: that was how Thomas liked him and perhaps, should he find him again in the afterlife, would it ease his lover’s judgment of what he had done. He was coming to him the same he once came away.  


Each second, the tempest was gaining a little more on him. He was fighting to sail further, further, further into this wilderness untamed. He could have sat and waited but he felt like there was something to reach.  


A groundswell, gracious and violent, suddenly threw him overboard and as the sea was filling him, he understood. There it was, emanating from the depths, the light he tried to reach. At the bottom of the ocean, calling him, beautiful while deadly. _Come_ , it said. _You can rest now_. And the voice, deeper, dearer than any siren’s or nymph’s, was the only one he ever cared for.  


Thomas’ voice surrounded him as his arms once did. “James”, Thomas said. And he knew that was him. No lieutenant, no captain, no man, no monster left. He was James and he smiled to the face of death, because he knew who awaited him behind the light at the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for killing off Jack ...


End file.
